It’s Valentine’s Day and more bouquets will be changing hands today than on any other holiday. Don’t settle for the same old, same old when you could be sending secret messages in the language of flowers.

In honor of the just-celebrated Chinese New Year, my thoughts turned to the many plants that have made their way here from the Middle Kingdom. I knew little about the paulownia until I was asked to identify a strange leaf.

Give me a beach where the sun is warm and the shade comes courtesy of a rustling palm. You can grow palms here as over-sized patio specimens with a great backstory. How many other plants once figured in a political scandal and inspired an indelible figure of speech?

In few places are art and nature more deftly entwined than in Claude Monet’s gardens at Giverny. Located about 45 miles from Paris, the gardens are familiar from the artist’s Impressionist works, which are known worldwide.

If dreary winter weather gets you down, consider a trip to a warmer, gentler season. It doesn’t take plane tickets to bask in abundant living color at one of the area’s outstanding glass houses. Road trip!

January is sort of a slow month. To liven it up, I like to give amaryllis bulbs away at Christmas and then challenge my friends to a race. Who will get the first bloom? Gentlemen and gentlewomen, start your engines…

Christmas brings out our inner child, innocent of cynicism and giddy with anticipation. Try for a moment to recapture that open-hearted embrace of things magical and mysterious. It will do you some good, I promise. (Photo, Maggie/Flickr)

Gratitude for our blessings is the finest impulse of today — or any day. May Thanksgiving reflect the best of family, friendship and feasting. And by the way, thanks to you, dear readers, for joining me here through the year.

The growing season is winding down but it’s not over ‘til it’s over. If you take care of garden chores now you’ll be securely tucked away when the snow flies — and ready for new adventures next spring.

Since Halloween is coming, it’s timely to consider some of the evil-doers of the plant kingdom. Many are defending themselves against predators. Others are just plain toxic for no known evolutionary reason.

Halloween will be here before you know it. The essential decoration is, of course, the jack-o-lantern. Turn an ordinary cucurbit into a spooky masterwork. It’s easy with stencils, the greatest cheat going for the artistically inept.

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